Todd, Tim and Kellan Cook love Baseball, the Seattle Mariners and trekking around the country to visit stadiums and watch games. These are their stories. #FatherSonBaseball

2012 Cook GFS Game 5 – Mariners vs. Rockies (5/18/12)

Friday, May 18, 2012, marked a big baseball milestone for me and Tim. When we entered Coors Field to watch our Mariners take on the Rockies, we were able to check the Rockies off our list of MLB teams we have seen play a home game. The Rockies were the 30thof 30. So, now we’ve seen them all.

But before we could make our personal baseball history, we needed drive from Kansas City to Denver. We woke up in Kansas City on May 17 and hopped in the car. When we pulled out of Kansas City on I-70, our GPS foreshadowed a long day. By the time my dad pointed it out to me, the GPS was telling us that we had 514 miles to drive until our next turn.

A ton of those miles represented the trek across Kansas, a state that was new to all four of us (well, my dad might have passed through on a train years ago). Aside from a looooooooooong, straight road with a 75 mile per hour speed limit, this is what Kansas looked like:

By all accounts, the best thing is all of Kansas is this little park in Wakeeney, KS that features a retired F-14 Tomcat fighter jet just sitting in the grass:

We all around Eisenhower Park (home of the jet) to stretch the legs and get some energy out of the boys after a nice lunch at the Wakeeney McDonalds. Fun times in Kansas!

Unfortunately, it wasn’t all fun and games in Kansas. Tim watched back-to-back-to-back movies on his portable DVD player while Kellan napped. The prolonged starring at a small TV screen while cows, fields, and windmills whizzed by his window resulted in Tim starting to feel a little car sick by the time we reached Colorado.

Before long, he was much more than a “little sick.” His head was spinning and it made for an ugly end of the drive.

Once we were checked into the hotel, he was feeling a bit better. He hadn’t eaten a thing in a while, so we headed out on foot…

…we walked past Coors Field where Tim posed with a fire hydrant. But the walking didn’t sit well with his car sickness. It came out of hiding and attacked him again as we neared the Blake Street Tavern:

The food was very tasty at Blake Street. I was quite happy to see that it is a University of Washington alumni bar (as well as several other universities). I also liked that they had a South Park pinball machine.

After dinner, I carried Kellan home and my dad pushed queasy Tim back to our hotel, which was just a little under a mile down the road from Coors Field. We called it a night and hoped that Tim would be feeling better the next day.

The next day we woke up and took it nice and leisurely. Rockies season ticket holder and Top Ten All-Time Ballhawk (as announced in Zack Hample’s “The Baseball”), Dan Sauvageau, advised us that the 16th Street Mall was a good place to check out for some food. So we did. And it was.

After a late lunch, Kellan rested (not quite napped) while Tim and grandpa went swimming.

And then it was game time. Well, it was close enough.

We were going to be sitting with Dan and his daughter Emily. We headed out from our hotel on foot with the plan of meeting Dan and Emily at the LF gate around 4:30.

I have been excited to get to Coors Field for a long time. I’m a loyal reader of the Don Chilcote’s Rockpile Rant on MLBlogs. In addition to taking amazing game action photos, D’s Rant makes you feel like the Coors Field regulars are like a big extended family. And, you know what, they sort of are. His blog also made me feel like I was going to know (or at least recognize) everyone out in the outfield at Coors Field. And, you know what, I sort of did.

D made us feel right at home before we even reached the ballpark. As Tim, Kellan, my dad and I walked up Park Avenue toward ballpark on Blake Street, D cruised by in his car on his way to the stadium. His trademark khaki Rockies bucket hat made it clear that it was the Rockpile Ranter himself welcoming us to Denver with a fist pump and a loud shout from his speeding car window. I gotta say, it was a cool experience to be greeted by a Coors Field regular before ever setting foot inside the ballpark.

Thanks, D!

On our walk past the home plate entrance, we stopped to get a picture with my 35th, Tim’s 33rd and Kellan’s 10th MLB stadium:

As we waited for Dan and Emily to arrive and the gates to open, Tim and I played catch, tossed baseballs off of a wall…

…, and did a little birding under a little under-pass next to the gate.

Now, the call Sean Casey “the Mayor” on MLB Network. But the MLB Network is based in Secaucus, New Jersey. Out in Denver, Dan Sauvageau is “the Mayor” – or at least he’s the unofficial Mayor of Coors Field. He knows everyone – fans and stadium employees alike. He helps other fans navigate the strict bag-checking process at the gate. He brings tootsie pops for seemingly his entire section. And he’s generally just incredibly knowledge, helpful and nice about every aspect of the Coors Field experience.

And if Dan is the Mayor, Emily is the first daughter of Coors Field. She has been to more than 425 Rockies games. Everyone knows her. And watching her navigate LF, it appears that that Coors Field is her second home. She’s one lucky little girl!

Anyway, aside from hooking us up with amazing tickets for the game, the first perk Dan got us was the ability to enter the stadium through a tunnel under the OF seats:

My pictures don’t do the experience justice at all. It was extremely cool to walk through the LF gate and, instead of heading up the stairs to the concourse, entering a door and walking the tunnels under the stadium where stadium employees were preparing for their work day.

After a short walk, we popped out of a little tunnel and found ourselves at our seats:

Is that pretty or what?

Yep, we were literally sitting right on the LF wall. The front row is a wide handicap-accessible seating area with a single row of seats running from the LF foul pole to the batters’ eye in CF. Dan’s seats (and ours) are in prime time homerun territory, straight away LF.

Here is a panorama that I took from row 1 in the LF corner (section 151) that shows the field and a bit of our fancy front row seating area:

In that last picture, there is a kid in a red hat and shirt standing to on the far left. He is in the “second” row. It is elevated a few feet above our row. The people sitting in rows 2 and above in LF cannot access the first row. It is crazy and awesome.

And we thoroughly loved it.

As you will see below, this could be most ideal seating section in all of Major League Baseball, particularly for people with little kids.

Before too long, the Mariners and the Rockpile Ranter showed up in LF:

We spent some time chatting with D at this game, but even more the next day (as we’ll see in our next game entry). D is one cool dude. A great guy to kick back with and watch some baseball.

D usually sits up in the “Rockpile” in deep CF (hence the name the “Rockpile Ranter,” but he’s friends with Dan and the rest of the guys in the front row and Dan lets him come down into the front row during BP (and games when he has extra tickets).

Now, there was one bad thing about Coors Field. Well, not really Coors Field, but our experience at Coors Field. While chatting with D, I set my camera (which had been having its share of troubles lately) on the OF wall, in the little crevasse between the yellow pad and the green railing), and it crashed to the ground when Tim bumped into the wall.

It was a silly move on my part, and I paid the price.

I didn’t notice the problem at first. But I did notice when Lucas Leutge finished playing catch along the LF line. As he walked away, I called out, “Hey, Lucas” and then flashed my glove. He turned and walked toward us. When he got close enough, I put down my own glove and pointed at Tim.

And Luetge hit Tim with a gem:

BOOM – Dodger Stadium commemorative baseball! Wow!

Thanks, Lucas!

The ball actually bounced out of Tim’s glove and he caught it in the inside of his elbow (what’s that little area called?). Tim was quite happy with the unique catch.

And we were both thrilled to see the commemorative logo. I didn’t know when, if, how we would ever have a chance to get our hands on a Dodger Stadium baseball this season. Now we know, Mariners/Rockies at Coors Field!

Tim, Kellan and I then swung around to foul territory once the rest of the stadium opened up so we could watch high-socks-buddies, Charlie Furbush and Tom Wilhelmson play catch along the line:

But we didn’t stay there long because we saw Ichiro…

…run out to RF.

We knew the odds would not be good, but we wanted to try to get a baseball from Tim’s favorite player at this milestone game.

But Hector Noesi was too nice. He tossed us a baseball before Ichiro had a chance to do it himself:

Oh, yeah, can you tell my camera was broken from that last picture? The black triangles on the top/left and bottom/right are pieces of the shutter than cover the lens when the camera is turned off. In the fall, the front of my camera was bent in and it wouldn’t let the lens open properly.

Oh, yeah:

Thanks, Hector!

After getting a baseball from Noesi right in front of Ichiro, we knew we wouldn’t be getting one from Ichiro too. So, we watched him a bit, and then we headed back to LF.

Pretty much right when we reached LCF, Blake Beavan tossed us another Dodger Stadium baseball!

Thanks, Blake!

While just standing around watching BP, I noticed something cool. The back of Tom Wilhelmson’s right sock had a MLB logo sewn onto it:

My dad had been hanging out in LF chatting with Dan and waiting to catch a big fly. After getting the toss up from Beavan, Kellan and I headed back down to the LF corner while Tim stayed with his grandpa.

At some point, I was wearing Kellan’s little kid glove and Kellan was just walking around checking stuff out…

…and then one of the Mariners batters launched a near homerun right at us. Ten minutes after the fact, I was already fuzzy on the details. I might have picked Kellan up, but I’m not sure. I might have just stepped by him and shielded him from the baseball heading toward us. Ultimately, I thought it was going to fall short. It did, but not too short to evade my kid glove. I reached far over the wall and made a snow cone catch on the fly!

In that picture above to the right, Kellan is checking out the baseball. I took that right after catching it…but I’m still unclear on if I picked up Kellan and handed him the baseball before taking the picture (which seems un-natural and not something I would do) or if I was already holding him and just handed him the baseball.

Me making a clean catch on a batted ball is a very rare occasion for me. I was thrilled to make the catch while wearing Kellan’s glove. Immediately upon the catch, I held my glove over my head and both my dad and D gave me congratulatory nods…and it sure seems like I was holding Kellan when that happened….but who knows.

Kellan and I then headed back over to LCF, and guess what? Tim was holding a baseball that Charlie Furbush had given him, completely unsolicited.

After catching the homer, Kellan and I headed back over to LCF and chatted with my dad, my dad and Dan. I noticed that Tim was holding a baseball. Turns out that Charlie Furbush, who was standing in LCF with Casper Wells…

…walked over and handed a baseball to Tim. Meanwhile, Jason Vargas and King Felix were standing around in LF. When Vargas fielded another one of those fancy Dodger Stadium baseballs and tossed it to my dad.

Thanks, Charlie and Jason!

A few minutes later, my dad caught a Miguel Olivo homerun on the ricochet. It landed up in the seats above us and bounced down to my dad on a big hop.

When BP wrapped up, Kellan and I were standing in CF right next to the batters eye. As the Mariners started clearing the field, I noticed that there was one lone baseball left on the field. It was sitting in the grass in (very) shallow CF. Blake Beavan was in CF and he was the last Mariner to start running toward the dugout. As he started running, I called out, “Hey, Blake!” When he turned to look at us, I pointed at the baseball and flashed him my glove. He gave me a *a-okay-buddy* hand gesture and started running toward the baseball. Just then Iwakuma swooped in from RF and grabbed the baseball. He was just trying to be helpful, cleaning up the Mariners mess.

I’m not sure if Beavan said something, but then Kuma turned turned and lateralled the baseball back to Beavan who was about 15 feet away and approaching rapidly. Beavan received the ball like a quarterback in the shotgun, and then he immediately spun and launched a long arching pass in our direction. It was right on the spot. And as I squeezed my glove around the very last baseball of BP, Beavan gave an exaggerated Kirk Gibson walk off homerun arm pump to celebrate his fine pass. And I gave Beavan a “you the man” point with my index finger and shouted a big:

Thanks, Blake!

And that was BP.

We had some plans for post-BP/pre-game. We met up with Dan and Emily and headed…

…to the seats in the LF corner. There was a little league parade going on around the warning track. We went to see if Tim and Emily could get into an on-field kick ball game that the Rockies run after BP some days (maybe every day, I’m not sure). Unfortunately, the Rockies had already selected two of the little league teams to play kick ball.

So we split up again. Tim and my dad headed to the kids play area and Kellan and I headed out to CF to watch Kevin Millwood warm up in the Mariners pen:

I have never been a Kevin Millwood fan. Little did I know he was about to pitch a complete game shut out two hitter!

Check out the cool view from the concourse above the batters’ eye and visitors’ bullpen at Coors Field:

Next, we headed over to section 142 and watched the Mariners position players do their final warm ups for the game. A nice fan offered to take our picture:

And I took a panorama from the stairway between sections 142 and 141:

So it was game time. We reported back to our seats in the first row of section 153. And it was wonderful. You might have noticed from our game reports that we move around a lot at games. We do it because the boys don’t want to just stay put in the seats for 9 innings. But in these seats, my dad and I could stay put and watch the game while Tim and Kellan ran around and played in the nice wide “row” behind us.

Kellan started off the game by running back and forth with his stroller…

…, which resulted in Coors Field’s famous beer vendor, Captain Earthman, taking note and chatting up Kellan a bit.

The 2011 season was pretty rough for me and Tim when it came to seeing the Mariners in person. The M’s were 1-8 when we were in attendance, including 6 consecutive losses to start our season, two walk-off losses, and the Mariners’ historic 17th consecutive loss in late-July 2011.

To put it mildly, we were hoping for a better in-person Mariners season in 2012. And we really wanted a Mariners win at this milestone game. Well, the Mariners started things off great for us. With one out in the top of the first, Michael Saunders drove a triple into the OF. Ichiro couldn’t get Saunders home with this week groundout:

But Kyle Seager followed with an RBI single. And just like that Kevin Millwood had all the run support he’d need on this night.

Our seats were truly great. They were just to the foul-line side of where Carlos Gonzalez and Mike Carp were stationed out in LF:

The low point in the game had nothing to do with the game itself. Kellan was sitting on my lap eating some nachos when he decided he wanted to sit in his stroller. As I set things up for him, he stepped on the corner of our nacho tray causing most of our nachos to fall on the ground:

That’s a definite nacho foul. And very sad. Kellan was fine with it because I let him eat all of the remaining nachos. Wouldn’t you know, it was only my share of the nachos that ended up on the ground.

Millwood mowed down the Rockies in the bottom of the first, and then Mike Carp hit a homerun into the batters’ eye in the bottom of the second to make the score 2-0 Mariners.

As the Mariner did their thing, the boys did their thing in our spacious front row:

The Rockies’ scoreboard was behind us in LF and it is a nice looking scoreboard topped with a big Rockies’ logo:

In the top of the third, Ichiro recorded our first *Ichiro hit* of the season:

But he was stranded on base.

I wandered around the front row a bit and took some photos. Here is the view out in the LCF corner (section 158):

One of the perks of our front row seats is that they have special mens and womens restrooms in a tunnel under the seats in LCF. I took this panorama from section 155 while standing in the tunnel leading to the front row restrooms:

The kids were permitted to do just about anything they wanted to do during the game, except touch the OF wall during each inning (they could touch it all they wanted between innings). Tim, Emily and Kellan spent a lot of time rolling one of Tim’s cloth training baseballs back and forth to each other behind our seats:

Our usher, Barb, had to remind Tim just to roll, and not throw, the baseball. But all-in-all, the kids were free to go crazy having fun. And they had lots and lots of fun:

And then it was time for ice cream:

Dan grabbed my camera and got a nice family photo (except my dad is hiding behind Kellan) while the boys were chowing down on their ice cream:

In the top of the sixth, Ichiro hit another single. He then stole second and took third on a throwing error. He then scored the Mariners third run of the game on a sacrifice fly by Kyle Seager.

So it was 3-0 Mariner going into the bottom of the sixth. And, amazingly, Millwood still had not given up a single hit. He retired the first two batters in the bottom of the sixth inning too. But then Marco Scutaro hit a weak grounder to Kyle Seager at 3B. Seager booted the ball. I thought it was an error, but the official scorer was stumped. If it was ruled a hit, Millwood’s no hitter would be gone. The scorer just sat and thought about it for a while. And then Jordan Pacheco took the official scorer off the hook – he hit a solid, no doubter single up the middle. The no hitter was gone, no matter how the scorer would ultimately rule on the Scutaro-to-Seager play.

Pacheco decided he would take 3B on the hit, but Michael Saunders had a different idea. He gunned Pacheco down at 3B to end the inning. Millwood would go on to pitch a complete game shut out without giving up another hit. So, had Seager made that tough, but completely doable play, we would have seen a no hitter!

After the no-no was gone, I decided it was time to run around and see the ballpark a bit. I started by running up to the Rockpile. Quite fittingly, I ran into D as I ran up the steps into the Rockpile. He was holding court with some of his fellow Rockpilers. I said a quick hello and then headed up to the last row of section 402, where it looked like this:

The concourse below the Rockpile seats juts out a big around the seats on either side. I got this picture from the concourse on the RF side of the Rockpile:

And then I headed to RF. Up in section 201, it looked like this:

From the second deck, I could see my dad and the boys hanging out with Dan and Emily:

And then I headed up to section 301:

I had to go all the way over to section 314 before I could get all the way up to the top of the upper deck. It looked like this up there:

And it looked like this from the aisle behind home plate and between sections 331 and 300:

This was the scene from section 332:

Millwood was unstoppable as he pitched to Troy Tulowitzki and Todd Helton in the bottom of the seventh:

Over in section 346, it looked like this:

I turned to the side and these purple seats…

…told me that I was one mile above sea level.

I took one last panorama from the upper deck, in section 346…

…before heading back down to the field level.

Back in the front row, I took another panorama from section 151:

Heading into the top of the ninth, Kyle Seager took advantage of the spacious outfield. The play developed so slowly that I had time to pull my camera out of my pocket and find Carlos Gonzalez in the LCF corner retrieving the first triple of Seager’s young career:

Like Saunders before him, Seager also scored following his triple, thanks to John Jaso sacrifice fly. That made the score 4-0 Mariners.

The kids were still having a heap of fun playing around behind the seats:

Heading into the bottom of the ninth, I was pulling for Millwood to complete the shut out. The Mariners were on their toes playing some great baseball behind Millwood. Actually, Seager wasn’t even on his toes, he was levitating an inch or two off the ground:

I’m not sure if he came in for defensive reasons or what, but Casper Wells…

…played the last couple innings in LF.

Millwood secured the win when he induced Cargo into a line out to 1B on this swing:

Mariners win!

There were four happy Mariners fans out in LF:

Check out those happy totals behind us:

Although the win was tucked safely in our back pockets, we still had work to do at this game. We still needed our Coors Field bonus picture for the MyGameBalls.com photo scavenger hunt. Unfortunately, like Busch Stadium and Kauffman Stadium, there are not many “Coors Field” signs inside Coors Field, which is funny because there are about 80 of them outside the stadium. But I had an idea.

On our way to the stop where I thought we could get the picture, I took some pictures of some cool seats:

How do you like that, a one-person bleacher bench! On the right, I just liked the Rockies logo on the side of the chair.

So, here you go, here is our Coors Field bonus picture:

Nice assist by the garbage can, eh?

Before heading back to the hotel, we got a panorama in the aisle behind home plate between section 131 and 130:

Then we got one more group shot. We asked a lingering fan to take the picture for us. I mentioned that I would like him to get the scoreboard in the background. All I meant was that I didn’t want him to zoom in on us and not get the stadium in the background.

Well, he focused on getting the scoreboard, and not so much on getting us all in the shot. Here is his handiwork:

So there you go. A wonderful night at Coors Field. The Mariners run their record to 1-0 with us in attendance in 2012. Millwood flirts with a no hitter but settles for a 2-hit complete game shutout. And Tim and I reached the milestone of having seen all 30 MLB teams play a home game.

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2 Comments

Are you referring to your medial epicondyle? The inside of your elbow?
Also–Coors Field looks awesome. I hope Dan and the Ranter are that nice to all the MLBloggers and baseball collectors–I may be heading out that way soon.
~Matt

TODD-Glad you and the family had a great visit to Colorado and Coors Field. That’s what you get when you save the best for last. There really is a great group of folks who habitate here. I enjoyed hang’n with ya during the second game and as far as first visits go you guys killed it…”D”http://www.RockpileRant.com

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